This invention relates to a vehicle roof having a cover which, in a closed position, closes an opening in the roof and which is rearwardly slidable from the closed position to an open position along guide rails that extend along both sides of the opening in the roof toward the rear, as well as having a wind deflector that can be raised automatically as a function of the sliding movement of the cover, said wind deflector forming a part of the roofing located in front of the cover and being pivotable around an axis extending transversely to the sliding direction of the cover.
In the case of a known vehicle roof of this type (German Offenlegungsschrift No. 30 12 538) the roof can be slid toward the rear under the fixed part of the vehicle roof. A tilting-out of the sliding cover is not possible. In addition, vehicle roofs are known that have a cover that can be tilted out into a ventilating position and can either be pushed over the fixed part of the roof (German Offenlegungschrift No. 33 11 452) or under the fixed part of the roof (German Offenlegungsschrift No. 32 38 454 corresponding to commonly assigned U.S. Application Ser. No. 530,776, filed Sept. 9, 1983, U.S. Pat. No. 4,566,730) toward the rear.
The invention, therefore, has a primary objective of providing a vehicle roof of the initially mentioned type, where, as known per se, the cover can be used as a ventilation flap, but without causing disturbing whirls behind the raised wind deflector.
According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, this objective is achieved by the fact that the cover can be tilted out into a ventilation position in which it forms a continuous extension of the wind deflector, which is at least partially raised.
The wind deflector and the cover can, therefore, jointly represent a continuous ventilation flap. In the ventilation position, air whirls are prevented at the rear edge of the wind deflector. In contrast to the known sliding/lifting roofs having a wind deflector which, in the closed position of the cover, is located under the cover, the wind deflector, in the closed position of the cover, is used as part of the roofing. As a result, the cover, itself, may be constructed to be correspondingly shorter and lighter.
For adjusting the position of the cover, preferably two transport carriages are provided which are slidable along guide rails and are connected with the cover via connecting-link guides which, by a limited shifting of the transport carriages in a longitudinal direction of the guide rails with respect to the cover, force the tilting-out of the cover. This results in an especially robust construction when, in a further development of the invention, each of the connecting-link guides has two link slots that are displaced with respect to one another in the longitudinal direction of the guide rails and two link pins, each of which engages in one of the link slots. In order to achieve a perfect alignment of the cover with the at least partially raised wind deflector, the link slots, in this case, are sloped in such a way that the cover, during the tilting-out, carries out a pivotal movement around an (imagined) transverse axis which corresponds to the pivotal axis of the wind deflector and, advantageously, essentially coincides with the front edge of the wind deflector.
For raising the wind deflector, two carriages may also be provided which are slidable along the guide rails and are connected with the wind deflector via link guiding means which force the wind deflector upwardly by the limited shifting of the carriages in the longitudinal direction of the guide rails with respect to the wind deflector. In this case, the carriages are advantageously, for a limited follow-up movement following the transport carriages, resiliently biased toward the rear and are shifted toward the front by the transport carriages. This has the advantage that no separate drive is required for the carriage serving for the adjustment of the wind deflector.
Preferably, in the locations between the cover closing position and the ventilating position, in which the cover forms an extension of the wind deflector, the wind deflector, with its rear area, acts as a hold-down device for the front end of the cover. This results in an especially stiff ventilation flap.